Christmas book gifts to go wild for

Most people nowadays have more material possessions than they need and it’s almost impossible to select suitable Christmas presents for them. One option is to give books, so here are a few suggestions.

I have to declare a personal interest in my first selection. Mike Brown’s ‘Images of Irish Nature’ is an exquisite photographic celebration of nature, but two of the essays included in it have been written by Outdoors columnists; Damien Enright and myself. We shouldn’t, even indirectly, promote our work, but when readers see Mike’s stunning photographs, they will understand why this book just had to be featured here.

Mike, the winner of a plethora of photographic awards, published his ‘Ireland’s Wildlife — A Photographic Essay’ to great critical acclaim in 2002. ‘Images of Irish Nature’ presents a new series of pictures, covering aspects of the natural world from landscapes and lightning to mammals and mushrooms. In a once-in-a-lifetime shot, a swallow is pictured feeding baby wrens. The wrens had taken over the swallow’s nest, so the evicted couple promptly built a new semidetached one beside it.! Éamon de Buitléar, in a foreword to the book, examines the challenges facing wildlife photographers, while Gordon D’Arcy, Padraig Whooley, Juanita Browne and Micheal Viney contribute interesting essays.

I must also declare a peripheral connection with my second selection, which is Éanna Ní Lamhna’s ‘Straight Talking Wild’. I have known Éanna for thirty years and, over the last decade, I have repeatedly crossed swords with her on RTÉ’s Mooney Goes Wild radio show. Despite many heated exchanges and almost coming to blows on occasion, we never let the sun set on our wrath. ‘Straight Talking Wild’ combines Éanna’s two previous books into a single volume with new material added. A compulsive communicator, nobody can express a complex idea in as colourful and readily understandable terms as she can. She never uses a 24-letter word when a four-lettered one will do, meaning even the most unsympathetic reader is won over. This series of humorous and irreverent essays on wildlife and conservation, encyclopaedic in its range of topics, is a compelling read. My own particular favourite is her piece on the fleas, lice and the other creepy-crawlies which use our own bodies as their habitat.

Jarlath Cunnane’s ‘Northabout, Sailing the North West & North East Passages’ tells the story of a voyage by a group of Irishmen through the infamous North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific and their subsequent journey back to the Atlantic via the even more difficult North East Passage through the ice-choked seas north of Siberia. This gripping narrative will appeal to sailors, wildlife enthusiasts and anybody smitten by the wanderlust. Playing traditional music at every stop on the journey, these intrepid wanderers established a rapport with everyone they met, with the surprising exception of the Americans. What excellent ambassadors for Ireland they must have been! This attractive vibrant book is illustrated with photographs. Its pictures of icebergs, Arctic landscapes and smiling Inuit evoke something of a Christmas atmosphere. A most appropriate gift!

Paul Davies’s ‘The Goldilocks Enigma, Why is the Universe just right for Life’, is about the ultimate outdoors, the cosmos. Not exactly bedtime reading, it is the book which most changed this reader’s view of the world in 2006. With the decline of orthodox religion in Ireland, many have turned to science for alternative answers to the great questions. The religious creation myths and ‘God of the gaps’ have given way to the Big Bang, super-strings and multiverses. If the religious answers to the ultimate questions collapse under scrutiny into vagueness and inconsistency, the current scientific models would seem to present just as many conundrums.

The enigma of the title has troubled physicists in recent decades. Goldilocks found Mammy Bear’s porridge too hot and Daddy Bears’ too lumpy. Baby Bear’s porridge, however, was ‘just right’. Likewise, for life to be possible and for humans to exist, conditions in the universe had to be ‘just right’. The odds against an accidentally-occurring universe being just right for life are enormous. The sub-atomic particles, of which matter and energy are composed, and the constants which govern their behaviour, are critically tuned. The slightest variation in any of them would result in an altogether different kind of universe, one in which life could not exist. Davies outlines current attempts to solve this ‘anthropic’ problem and, in doing so, gives as lucid an introduction to the abstruse notions of modern physics and cosmology as it’s possible to give.

For the outdoor enthusiast based in Limerick, there is an ideal present. Geoff Hunt’s ‘Limerick Nature Walks’ describes 35 routes in the county, with full colour maps and detailed instructions for each. Notes are included on the flora and fauna which might be encountered at the various locations en route. Attractive photographs adorn the text and lists of the birds, butterflies and dragonflies, recorded in the county to date, appear as appendices.

Images of Irish Nature by Mike Brown, (Mike Brown Photography) €39.95; Straight Talking Wild by Éanna Ní Lamhna, (TownHouse) €14.99; Northabout by Jarlath Cunnane, (Collins Press) €21.95; The Goldilocks Enigma by Paul Davies, (Allen Lane) £22. Limerick Nature Walks by Geoff Hunt, (Gaelscoil Ó Doghair, Newcastlewest Bookstore) €25.